Fractal Design Node 605 review: ultimate HTPC case?

Excellent HTPC chassis with a price tag

By David van DantzigMonday 26 November 2012 14:58

Introduction

While the home theather PC is under siege by increasingly smart settop boxes and media players, it remains the best solution for being able to effortlessly watch television and any other type of digital video material. The number of HTPC chassis hasn't really grown much lately, but Fractal Design has come up with another option with the Node 605.

The Node 605 was announced at Computex earlier this year, but our test lab didn't receive a sample until now. Despite the modest dimensions of this chassis, it is supposed to be able to hold a full ATX motherboard, a standard ATX power supply and four hard drives. Graphics cards that are larger than normal should also fit, and you can even add an optical slimline station.

Lots of computer in very little space, in other words. This positions the Node 605 against various Silverstone products. It's priced a little higher than those, at around £115. That's not very cheap for a chassis with a volume of not even 25 litres, especially when it's not entirely in aluminium. Fractal Design will have to pull out all the stops to justify that price tag.

Comparing

We have not tested that many HTPC chassis of late, which is partially because there aren't that many out there. We will compare the Fractal Design Node 605 with three other HTPC chassis and one cube from Xigmatek. The Fractal Design one is by far the most expensive, but it has very similar dimensions. It measures 44.5 cm x 34.6 cm x 16.2 cm with a volume of almost 25 dm³. The width is slightly wider than the average 43 cm of hifi components. The chassis weighs about 6 kg.